"Yet now, with just half a dozen cities hooked up, the Wall Street Journal reports that Google is applying the brakes out of concern that the process costs way too much money. But how could the company not have seen this coming? Consider that it cost Verizon Communications Inc. $23 billion to string its Fios fiber optic network to about 18 million homes over the past decade. In Boston Verizon is vowing to replace virtually all of the city’s copper phone lines over the next six years at a cost of at least $300 million.

Verizon, unlike Google, is a telecom company born and bred. It already has millions of miles of wire in the ground and it co-owns nearly every telephone pole in Boston. Still, Verizon will need hundreds of millions and most of a decade to get the job done. Even for people who know what they’re doing, wiring a city is very expensive and very difficult. Apparently, this was news to Google."